by Shashi Deshpande > The Feminist Press at the City University of New York > $ 21.95

With A Matter of Time, her first novel to be published in the United States, well-known Indian feminist writer Shashi Deshpande returns to the territory that she has made intensely her own: the interior lives of contemporary middle-class Indian women who are struggling to achieve a sense of self. With delicate compassion and needle-sharp insight, Deshpande delineates the battle to build an independent life against a backdrop of ancient discriminations and daily humiliations.

The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order

edited by Marcelle Karp and Debbie Stoller > Penguin > $15.95

If we are to believe the essays in The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order, the genesis of Third Wave feminism can be traced directly to Farrah Fawcett's hairstyle circa 1977.

The overriding sentiment in this anthology--a collection of pieces from BUST magazine--is best described as a big wet kiss to seventies coifs, the dubious achievements of Courtney Love, and the state of pop culture in general.

The Pig Farmer's Daughter and Other Tales of American Justice: Episodes of Racism and Sexism in the Courts from 1865 to the Present

by Mary Frances Berry > Knopf > $24

In this impressive work chronicling more than 100 years of U.S. civil and criminal justice, Mary Frances Berry--who currently heads the U.S. Civil Rights Commission--suggests, by way of critical analysis and myriad examples, that our worst fears are true: often it is not the "rule of law," the merits of a case, or even an attorney's prowess that determines a legal decision. Legal decisions, Berry argues, are highly influenced by persistent gender, race, and class biases in the American judiciary. According to Berry, such biases work for and against parties in complex ways: for example, a poor white woman like the "pig farmer's daughter" who accuses a black man of rape is easily believed by race-torn local juries and prosecutors but disbelieved by elite appellate judges moved by class bias and racial paternalism.